I don’t really do New Year’s resolutions because I think we all put enough pressure on ourselves all of the time to constantly do more and be better. However I did think that if I was going to have a New Year’s resolution it should probably be to start engaging more on LinkedIn – so I’m trying out another blog.

Last year seemed to go in a whirlwind. I took on quite a bit more in my portfolio so I now have Executive responsibility for Estate’s and Facilities, Health and Safety and Digital but now also Improvement, Transformation and Health Inequalities. It’s been an amazing experience so far because the teams are great and there are lots of opportunities for overlap and alignment across the portfolio. At the same time at home the kids seem to be growing exponentially in size and maturity – my babies have officially gone! Very nearly 8 and 10 and my youngest just insisted on a new mullet hair cut which is very cool. I am no longer the curator of their style and I do love their independence developing. I am not nearly so much loving the constant debate over screen time – what their friends are allowed to watch and play compared to them for how long.

I’ve enjoyed the cold so far in January but I do find this time of year quite hard. There is so much build up to Christmas and then all of a sudden it’s done, I’ve stuffed myself with too much stuffing and chocolates, the house looks simultaneously bare and messy, I’ve not done enough proper exercise and I’ve definitely not had enough sunshine so I don’t feel my best. To keep myself focussed and positive I like to think about the good things to come in the New Year and what I want to achieve so I wanted to reflect on that.

There’s lots of talk in the NHS as we all know about the three shifts to care in the community, prevention and digitisation. It’s been great in the last couple of months spending time visiting and listening to our community teams. We wanted to understand the reality for them, think about how we could support them to improve and consider where we could have the biggest impact investing in the community which we know is absolutely the right thing to do for our service users.

We’ve heard from our community teams about the challenges in managing such varied caseloads. Our teams are working with primary care and neighbourhood partners but also caring for people with higher acuity and leaning in to support inpatients and crisis care. We’ve had conversations about how we can use improvement to define standard work, improve our pathways and use our data to understand different levels of acuity and social needs in different communities. We’ve also talked about how we might think differently about our Estate and whether we are where people need us to be.

Teams are spending far less time patient facing than they would like to and the digital systems and processes are not always making it easy for people – how do we use digital solutions to release time to care, make it easier for people every day to do the work they love and reduce the wasted time? How do we support teams to do their jobs and improve their jobs when there are real challenges with sickness and service pressures?

No easy answers, but we love a challenge and lots of exciting things to come in this space this year – not just in community but across the Trust. A few of the main things I’m looking forward to:

• Ramping up our Improvement approach LSCi – focussing on empowering frontline teams, increasing value and reducing waste
• Implementing the new Complex Emotional Needs pathway, scaling up the Patient First Pathway work to embed Royal College Standards and reduce waste and continuing the improvement focus on co-occurring diagnosis
• Beginning new work on the remaining key pathways including psychosis
• Continuing RIO recharged – our EPR optimisation – aligned to clinical pathway development and rolling out ambient and our virtual assistant after successful testing
• Delivering on our Estates review including ensuring improved clinic spaces and neighbourhood integrated health hubs
• Going further with our Health Inequalities plan – aligning to our developing approach to neighbourhood delivery and digital interoperability
• Expanding on our joint digital and estates work in living labs

I have learnt over the years that my relentless positivity can be seen by some as lack of realism but I continue to believe in the power of positivity as long as we’re always learning. Even If we don’t get all of the way we have to set ourselves ambitious goals because we have to be ambitious for our people – our colleagues, our service users, our communities. We often talk in improvement about needing a ‘burning platform’ – an understanding that things are bad enough to give us a sense of urgency and shared purpose. It struck me though when our Chairman David Fillingham, talked instead about a ‘burning ambition’. I definitely feel that burning ambition, an ambition to do more with less, to not give up, to continue to believe that it’s possible – if we think differently, we collaborate, get the basics right and innovate and use our data. And finally if we’re led by an improvement approach that tells us that the answers lie with the teams themselves – the people close to the work must lead the way – our service users, our colleagues, our communities. So I’m starting the year with positivity, ambition and hope!

Picture of a beautiful sunrise I was very lucky to see in North Wales recently, taken by my son